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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Because their entire argument thus far has basically been “but we’re a library.” But that completely misses the point that even libraries need to comply with licensing laws. Even with ebooks, they can’t just lend an unlimited number of copies. They have licensing agreements with the publishers, to be able to lend [x] copies of [y] book at a time.

    They purchase digital licenses to be able to lend those books, and they can only lend as many licenses as they own. Just like physical books. They need to use time-gated DRM to automatically revoke access whenever the rental time is up.

    And at first, that’s exactly what IA did. But they decided to disable that DRM, and just start lending unlimited copies to people instead, which flies in the face of established copyright law.


  • Yeah, that last paragraph is important. I’m a professional audio technician, and way too many people will begin with boosts instead of cuts. But cutting is much easier on a technical level, because you’re just lowering the volume of something. Boosting is much more technically complicated, because you’re “adding” signal that doesn’t already exist. So you have to make that signal from something, and that’s much more technically difficult than simply turning the volume down.

    Imagine you have a signal coming in at a baseline of 0dB. Cutting 6dB is easy, because you simply let less of the signal pass. But if you want to turn it up 6dB, you need to “create” that 6dB from somewhere, because it doesn’t already exist. You can’t just “turn it up” because it’s already turned all the way up at 0dB.








  • +1 for Anna’s Archive. It’s an amazing resource for students too, since they keep research papers and textbooks.

    And before someone gets up in arms about the research papers, the researchers don’t get paid by the journals for publishing with them. In fact, the researchers need to pay the journal to publish, and then the journal turns around and charges people to read it.

    If you ever need to get research for free, you can usually email the researchers directly and they’ll be happy to share it for free; They hate the journals too, (because like I said earlier, they have to pay the journal thousands of dollars,) but feel obligated to use them to publish.

    Even worse, that research and journal publishing was often funded by public funds and research grants. So the journal is paywalling research that taxpayers already paid for, and should be free to access.



  • So honest question. Do you know anyone who’s been threatened with gun violence? Because as an American my initial response was that it isn’t that bad

    I mean, I’m only in my 30’s and I know four people who have been shot. Two were robberies, one was a seemingly random act of violence, and the fourth was due to a domestic dispute. Three are still alive, but that fourth died in his girlfriend’s arms before paramedics arrived. It happened a decade ago, and she still has night terrors from it. And this is in a nice suburb, not someplace full of gangs.





  • There’s a LOT of snake oil in the audio world. Especially home theater and home studio setups. I’m a professional audio technician, and some of the “audiophile” setups I have seen are just outright asinine.

    Use balanced signal for runs over ~3 feet. Use the cheapest star-quad cable you can get, and the most basic $4 Neutrik connectors. Why? Because that album you’re using to test your “hi-fi” sound system was recorded using exactly that: Cheap ¢30/foot cable and basic Neutrik connectors.

    It’s also what concert setups use. You think a concert with six combined miles of cabling is going to be paying $2000 per cable? Fuck no, they’re using the cheap shit (which was hand soldered in bulk at the warehouse workbench by their lowest paid shop tech), to run that million dollar audio system. Their money goes to the speakers, amps, and mixer; Not gold plated wire, robotic soldering, or triple insulated jackets. In double-blind tests, audiophiles can’t hear the difference between a $500 cable and a couple of plasti-dipped coat hangers twisted together.

    The people who complain about digital audio also can’t tell the difference in double-blind tests. Because modern audio hardware is able to perfectly emulate old analog gear. Google the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for a breakdown of how we can perfectly capture and recreate analog audio with digital equipment. Vacuum tubes were groundbreaking when they were first used. But they had a lot of issues, and have very little relevance in today’s systems. They’re prone to burning out, notoriously fragile, and can be emulated perfectly.



  • Also, the “raise it to $15 per hour” minimum wage debate has been going on for so long that the $15 is now outdated. If the debate started again today, the number would realistically be closer to $25-$30 per hour.

    And if you just got upset because you’re making $30 per hour and don’t want to be equated with minimum wage, then maybe you need to consider how much you could be making if minimum wage were higher. Here’s a hint: You’d be making much more than $30 per hour.